Best camera for your pocket? Ricoh GR III, Sony RX100 VII, LUMIX LX100 II, Canon G5X II — Denae & Andrew
The Ricoh GR III, of course, has no built-in EVF. They make one that gives you framelines, but no real data as an external mounting option. I haven’t tried that, so I can’t speak to it. But the problem here for me is that I live in an area where it’s really bright outside almost all year around. When I’m photographing the family outside, say if we’re mountain biking or hiking, the LCD is really hard to use. Especially since there is no articulation to it. I need an EVF for those situations. So for travel, if you’re going to find yourself in bright tropical areas, this is something you need to consider.
LCD
When it comes to LCD’s I find that only one of them isn’t up to par. The Lumix LX 100 II just feels older, it probably is. Images don’t look very good with dark tones looking just awful. And I found that off-putting at those few times that I did chimp a bit. So that’s something to note.
Exposure controls
As far as shooting controls, I definitely feel like the Lumix LX 100 II wins for usability. It has a dedicated, numbered aperture ring, it has a dedicated and numbered shutter dial, a plus/minus EV dial, and it’s highly customizable otherwise with, I wanna say 11 customizable buttons and a customizable ring. The only weird thing about it, in my opinion is this the strangeness of having an aspect ratio picker here on the lens. This feels like a feature you change once, if at all. It seems odd to dedicate a hardware location to that feature to me.
And while it doesn’t have the same dedicated dials for a pleasant Fuji-esque shooting experience like the LX100 II, the Canon G5X II does have a plus/minus EV dial, which is really nice when you shoot aperture priority with smart ISO for documentary photography like I do.
I feel like having at least that dedicated dial would have helped the shooting experience of both the Ricoh GR III and the Sony RX 100 VII, but I recognize also that not everyone shoots this way.
The Ricoh GR III has this little lever style dial, but it feels so cheap and plasticy and I just hate it. I also find that I constantly am accidentally pressing it and bringing up the image control menu. I’ve heard this camera is totally customizable and if I were doing a long term review of this, I’m sure I’d mess with that a lot. And I think you really have to if you’re going to invest in this. You’ll need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get it configured the way that works best for you, including how you setup things like snap focus and and just the exposure settings in general.
As far as usability the RX100 VII probably loses here. There are less dials to work with and customize, and you do feel more reliant on the LCD to change settings. It’s not wonderful.
Focus
Next I want to talk a bit about both AF and focus control with these cameras. But I think it’s worth pointing out that there is a lot of variation here and it will depend hugely on your style of focusing. But I’ll try to cover it well enough to hit most of your needs.
When it comes to autofocus in general the Sony RX100 VII mops the floor with the other cameras in this department. None of them will be able to achieve what it can with its 357 phase detect auto points and that animal and human face detection technology. Canon certainly has the capability, but the G5X II does not have any phase detection auto points, causing it to rely on contrast detect only, like the LUMIX LX100 II. Having said that, all three of these cameras focused well and got the job done well during my tests. The only one that really just sucked was the Ricoh GR III. I missed an incredible amount of shots waiting for this thing to autofocus. Now, a lot of the time I was in low light. Our home isn’t bright and I shot plenty at night. That might be the Achilles heal of this device. I’m not really sure. But it’s a bit surprising since this sensor does incorporate phase detection, unlike the Canon and LUMIX.
But I think most people who use this camera do so on the street, they utilize the snap focus capability, they shoot in a style which incorporates hyperfocal distance, they don’t rely on autofocus. And if you like that idea, you may enjoy this camera a bit more.
But for those of us with pets and kids and who appreciate a responsive face detection system, The RX 100 VII will be the most appealing.
But often I actually prefer to use focus points and turn off all automatic face detection, especially while using an EVF. And in that department both the LUMIX LX100 II, the Canon G5X II , and RX100 VII all are really great since you can use the touch drag focus feature. This is where when you’re holding the EVF up to your eye, you can use your thumb to change where the focus point is on the screen. You don’t have to drag clear across the screen to do so, it can remain relative to where you’re dragging here on the right side. And I found this to be both reliable to use with all three. Unless you try to shoot vertically, then it all sorta goes to hell since your nose is then involved and messes things up. But this is my favorite style of shooting, personally.
Sensor size and image quality
Getting into sensor size and image quality, this is a mixed bag. It’s hard to go apples to apples when you have different size sensors and different types of lenses. But I’ll do my best to help you navigate those waters.
